That is not surprising, really. While WordPress makes adding content and overall management of your site very easy, creating a responsive Web design is rather different. Responsive Web design helps you display your site perfectly on the ever-growing number of devices and different screen sizes that exist now.

So just how exactly do you do it? Here are some tips:

1. Get a responsive theme from the start.

The good thing about WordPress is that there are a lot of themes that you can choose from to help you easily get the look and feel you want for your Web site. You would need to see just how customizable the theme is and how flexible it is. Now, you can just add being able to handle responsive Web design out of the box on your list of criteria.

Getting a theme that can help you do responsive Web design is the quickest way to ensure that your WordPress site displays perfectly on any screen.

And the good news - There is no shortage of responsive themes from a lot of trusted sources. Just take your pick. You could either pay for these ready-made responsive themes or choose one that is free.

Where to look for these responsive themes? Try the following sites:

Wordpress.org has more than 100 responsive themes. Just do a theme search using "responsive" as the keyword or visit http://wordpress.org/themes/search.php?q=responsive.

Other Web sites for WordPress themes. Check out the Carrington themes at http://carringtontheme.com. If you run an online shop on WordPress, then you will appreciate Jigoshop, which helps you get a responsive WordPress theme and plugin out of the box. You can check out Jigoshop at http://jigoshop.com. Do not limit yourself with these themes, though, as there are many others!

How to choose your responsive theme:

Looks matter. This should be your first consideration when choosing a theme. A theme should be able to give you the look you want without having to spend days and hours customizing it.

Performance matters. Themes may often affect your site's loading speed, so stay away from themes that call on too many files, or forces you to load files with too many kilobytes. A theme should not slow your site down.

Customizability. This is probably not a problem if you are buying a theme, but if you are looking for free ones, then there might be some limitations on what you could customize and personalize with your theme.

2. Transform your current theme into a responsive one.

If you already have a theme that you now use for your desktop Web site and if you really like the look of that one, except that it is coded in pixels rather than percentage, then work on making it more responsive.

How do you do this?

a. Get your media queries in order.

When you get a WordPress theme, you should have a stylesheet that is used on both mobile and desktop versions of your site. You would only have to specify how particular screen sizes would be different from this default style.

You would need to define the maximum width that this set of styles changes would apply for. To do that use:

@media screen and (max-width: 320px)

This means that for screen sizes measuring 320 pixels wide or smaller, a different set of styles would be used.

Other screen sizes you might want to use are 480 pixels, 780 pixels and 1024 pixels.

b. Know how to deal with images.

Images can be a problem if they are too big and they spill out of their containers. To ensure that this never happens, add the following code to your CSS

body img {
max-width: 100%;,br />
}

Either that or you upload different image sizes, which will be loaded accordingly depending on the size of the device used.

c. Use the appropriate text size.

When working with a smaller layout on a small screen, your text might appear very big. So just adjust the text size using this handy code:

body {
font-size: 60%;
line-height: 1.4em;
}

d. Change other elements appropriately.

Other elements in the layout that you need to change include the overall width of the site, the sidebar, the content, footer and widgets.

e. Know how to deal with navigation.

There are a lot of techniques to help you get a more responsive navigation on your site. For one, you could use a drop down box rather than a navigation bar. Or you could have your navigation menu take up an entire page and create an app-like environment for your site. Or even getting plugins to handle the navigation menu for you.

3. Plugins

Plugins are a good idea if you do not want to change your current theme. If mobile visitors are not exactly a priority for you right now, but at the same time you also do not want them to get stuck with a sucky experience while browsing through your site on their Android phones, then you might want to consider plugins.

Furthermore, if you have a Web site that is less focused on graphics and layout, then plugins would be a viable solution. This is especially true for personal or business blogs, or a news site. Web sites that are focused on content would do well using a plugin for responsive design.

One of the plugins you can try out is WPTouch.

WPTouch removes some elements of your existing theme and displays your content perfectly on any screen size. If you want to be able to include some graphics, personalize the theme with color and style changes and add other elements, you can pay for this plugin to do all that.

Here are other popular plugins you can try for you to have a responsive WordPress site:

Page Builder - This is for your page's column layouts. Works on both responsive and non-responsive themes.

Fluid Responsive Slideshow - For WordPress sites that have slideshows or image galleries, this plugin is perfect for you. With FRS, you don't have to be an expert to properly integrate slideshows to every post or page.

These are just some ways on how to do responsive Web design on WordPress. Using these ideas, you can now start implementing to have your WordPress Web site display perfectly on just about any screen.

Watch me build a Responsive WordPress site from scratch! - Video One

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Gabriel L. Sumastre is the owner of TheFinestWriter.com. He is
a freelance technology writer, technical writer and tech blogger for
hire since 2005. He has written more than a thousand articles related
to tech and gadgets, cloud computing, IT management, SEO, SEM and
software solutions. He ghostwrites books / e-books and has a Bachelor
of Science degree in computer science. He knows how to code. Michael
is also an expert in webmastering and loves to ride his sportsbike. He
maintains his portfolio and personal blog at TheFinestWriter.com